PRESS ONWARD!
Think big!
"There is one thing mightier than kings and armies"--aye, than Congresses and political parties--"the power of an idea when its time has come to move." The time for woman suffrage has come. The woman's hour has struck. If parties prefer to postpone action longer and thus do battle with this idea, they challenge the inevitable. The idea will not perish; the party which opposes it may. Every delay, every trick, every political dishonesty from now on will antagonize the women of the land more and more, and when the party or parties which have so delayed woman suffrage finally let it come, their sincerity will be doubted and their appeal to the new voters will be met with suspicion. This is the psychology of the situation. Can you afford the risk? Think it over. - Carrie Chapman Catt Speech before Congress 1917
As we watch this next clip think about how our unions are talked about in the media. What stories are chosen and why? Who decides what is news worthy? What can we do to make our voices heard?
To follow along with blog and discussion watch movie from 29:13-37:40.
"Before you visit a congress man look him up in our card index."
Ultimately, the suffrage movement provided political training for some of the early women pioneers in Congress.
Doris Stevens
Doris Stevens believed fervently in militancy and in "new woman feminism," the idea that women should reclaim their power from a male-dominated society. She was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1892 and graduated from Oberlin College in 1911. Stevens was a social worker and high school teacher in Ohio and Michigan before going to work as a regional organizer for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
As a participant in the March 3, 1913 Washington, D.C. suffrage parade, Doris was told by an onlooker, "You ought to get yourself a man. You can get what you want without that [marching]." Instead, she joined the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage in 1914 as executive secretary, and organized the first convention of women voters at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. In 1916, she served on the first executive board of the newly formed National Woman’s Party (NWP) and was the vice-chairman of the NWP’s New York branch.
Congress reflects us in all our strengths and all our weaknesses. It reflects our regional idiosyncrasies, our ethnic, religious, and racial diversity, our multitude of professions, and our shadings of opinion on everything from the value of war to the war over values. Congress is the government's most representative body ... Congress is essentially charged with reconciling our many points of view on the great public policy issues of the day.
:— Smith, Roberts, and Wielen
X-tra!
1910 the push for suffrage took on a new urgency under the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and the more radical National Woman’s Party (NWP). Their campaigns reached wide audiences, in part because suffragists had learned to spread their messages through imaginative use of various media. Supporters held old-fashioned pageants and street parades as well as statewide tours, thanks to the relatively new technology of automobiles. Suffragists also reached large audiences through newspapers. In Alice Duer Miller’s "Unauthorized Interviews," originally published as newspaper columns in the New York Tribune, the pro-suffrage writer spoofed male legislators with clever reversals of gender stereotypes: the men were petulant and irrational, while the women suffragists remained cool and logical.
Enjoy Alice Duer Miller’s Satiric Journalism
Suffragists.
Please, sir, to tell us, if you will,
How you will vote upon our bill?
1st Legislator.
Ladies, observe my easy grace,
My manners and my pleasant face;
I hope you see I bow, I smile,
call you "ladies"—all the while
My heart is black with seething hate
That I, who am so very great,
Should have to waste a single minute
On your affairs—there’s nothing in it.
Suffragists (to another legislator).
And you, sir, if we recollect,
Are much opposed. Is that correct?
2nd Legislator.
Opposed! O ladies, no, indeed!
I vote against you, I concede;
I may continue so to do,
But I am not opposed to you.
To call me so is most unjust.
I make myself quite plain, I trust.
Suffragists (to another legislator).
And may we hear from you, sir, how
You’ll vote?
3rd Legislator.
I have no option now;
I listen to my district’s voice;
It voted no; I have no choice.
Suffragists.
O sir, I think there’s some mistake,
Your district carried.
4th Legislator (hastily interrupting).
Let me make
His statement clear; he means that we
All come here absolutely free.
Not at our districts' beck and nod,
We vote to please ourselves and God;
And we are not in all events
The slaves of our constituents.
Suffragists (slightly puzzled, to another legislator).
And you, sir, shall you vote for it?
5th Legislator.
No, though I think you will admit
I have a very open mind;
If in my district I should find
The women want it (which they don’t)
I’d vote for it. Till then I won’t.
Suffragists.
And have you asked so very many?
5th Legislator (astonished).
Why, no, I don’t think I’ve asked any.
Suffragists (to another legislator).
And what, sir, is your attitude?
6th Legislator.
I hope you will not think me rude,
If, ladies, as a friend I say
You do not work the proper way.
It’s time you disappeared, and let
The public utterly forget
That there are women wish to vote.
Then at some future time, remote,
In twenty years, or twenty-five,
If you should chance to be alive,
You’d see a change—at least you ought—
A striking change in public thought.
This from a friend.
Suffragists.
But are you so?
6th Legislator.
A friend? Oh, well, I voted "no,
But surely you can comprehend
That I advise you as a friend.
Suffragists alone.
1st Suffragist.
The men in favour talk much less.
2nd Suffragist.
They haven’t much to say but "yes";
The men opposed explain a lot
How they’re opposed and yet they’re not.
It takes some time to make that clear.
1st Suffragist.
How very bad the air is here!
2nd Suffragist.
Do you refer to ventilation,
Or to the general situation?
A real movement touches everyone.
"Ever wish you were a man?"
Elizabeth Cady Stanton married an abolitionist against her father’s will. She was a wife and mother of seven children who spoke against organized religion because she believed it reduced women to second-class status. She came from a traditional, upper class family and spent much of her young life trying to please a father who clearly favored sons.
"I wish you were a boy," he once said to her as she showed him a hard-earned academic prize. But her conservative father, a lawyer and judge, did allow his daughter into his law office where she witnessed firsthand how the law treated women as men’s property rather than as citizens equal to men. She vowed to change women’s legal status.
"She's calling it the Congressional Union, see who's on the advisory board?"
Helen Keller
Helen Keller was part of wide circle of reformers and radicals who participated in a variety of overlapping causes. She was a strong advocate for women’s rights and women’s suffrage, writing in 1916: "Women have discovered that they cannot rely on men’s chivalry to give them justice." She supported birth control and praised its leading advocate, Margaret Sanger, with whom she had many mutual friends. Keller argued that capitalists wanted workers to have large families to supply cheap labor to factories but forced poor children to live in miserable conditions. "Only by taking the responsibility of birth control into their own hands," Keller said, "can [women] roll back the awful tide of misery that is sweeping over them and their children."
After 1924, Keller devoted most of her time and energy to speaking and fundraising for the American Foundation for the Blind, but still supported radical causes. Even as feminism began to ebb, she continued to agitate for women's rights. In 1932, she wrote an article for Home magazine, "Great American Women," praising the early suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She also penned a humorous article for the Atlantic Monthly, "Put Your Husband in the Kitchen."
She was also a member of the IWW.
X-tra!
This video was inspired by historian Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner who brilliantly determined to preserve and document the writings of suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage. In the 19th century, Gage complained that women of means funded their husbands’ alma maters, churches and the ballet, but rarely stepped forward to fund their suffragette sisters. Imagine how different the world would be today if women had begun funding women sooner!
"Read the editorial, she's telling women to boycott Wilson in the next election."
A boycott, like a strike, is a tactic of last resource, - it should only follow at the end of a long campaign to allow the guilty party to do the right thing.
A "girlcott" is preferential purchasing from those we wish to reward for their good actions.
Many women contributed financially to the suffrage movement. Some women would purchase hats on their husbands accounts and return them for money to donate.
Don't just read the news make it.
Goal
"To make this paper a force to be reckoned with in the political life of the United States."
As Paul explained, "[The Suffragist] is not issued to appeal to women's clubs or to small suffrage organizations at all . . . Our subscription list is national and our newsstand sales should be national."66 Thus, the creation and circulation of The Suffragist enacted the CUWS's militant push to enter the arena of national politics and to generate publicity for a national audience.
The Suffragist on November 15, 1913 as the official organ for her Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. Rheta Childe Dorr was listed as its first editor, and its focus was to lead the charge for a Federal Amendment, subordination all other issues to this goal. In many ways, the new publication, which she brought with her when the Congressional Union split off from NAWSA in 1914, resembled Christabel Pankhurst’s English publication, The Suffragette, in size, length, and the use of a front-page cartoon, later drawn by Nina Allender, whose drawings were to have considerable impact. Although Paul was not listed as editor, she insisted on editorial control, a fact that led to Dorr’s resignation in 1914, although she continued to support Paul and the aims of the Union. Paul along with her friend, Lucy Burns then served as the paper’s editors. This arrangement continued until 1917 when Edith Houghton Hooker, who previously had served as the founder and editor of the Maryland Suffrage News, took over. When the Congressional Union evolved into the National Woman’s Party in 1916, The Suffragist came along, and continued to be a powerful voice for suffrage throughout the war. The Suffragist ceased publication after the passage of the Federal Amendment in 1920. It was to morph several years later into a similar publication called Equal Rights that was started in conjunction with Paul’s work on an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.
X-tra!
Nina Allender
Around 1910, Nina Allender became actively involved in the suffrage movement, serving as president of the DC branch of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and of the Stanton Club, a local suffrage organization in the District. In 1913, Allender and her mother Eva Evans (one of the first women employees at the Department of the Interior) received a visit from Alice Paul, whom they did not know, asking them to contribute money and time to the suffrage cause. They agreed, thus beginning Allender’s lifelong association with the National Woman’s Party (NWP).
In 1914, Paul persuaded Allender to draw cartoons for The Suffragist. While Allender’s hesitated, saying "she painted, and preferred to paint," Paul convinced her to try the new format. Her political cartoons appeared regularly in The Suffragist (and its successor Equal Rights) until 1927. In 1915, in addition to her position as art editor for The Suffragist, Allender was also named Chairman of the D.C. Branch of the Congressional Union. By 1916, she was labeled the "Official Cartoonist" for the organization. It was in The Suffragist that Nina Allender’s point of view sparked a surge of support for the suffrage amendment and changed the traditional image of the suffragist to a new, modern, and intelligent woman ready to take on the political world and defend her civil rights. Her cartoons were "quick, vivid headlines" that captured the news of the week and the spirit of the cause.
Nina’s image of the suffragist—the "Allender Girl"—portrayed her as young, slender, and energetic—a capable woman with an intense commitment to the cause. Allender used her illustrations to present a spectrum of "The Modern Woman": feminist, wife, mother, student, and activist. This much more complex and positive representation was critical in garnering public support for women’s rights.
In a 1920 interview with the Christian Science Monitor, Allender reflected on her major artistic contribution by saying, "political cartooning gives you a sense of power that nothing else does."
("Learning New Tricks" by Nina Allender, February 1, 1920
A woman tries to train the Republican Elephant and the Democratic Donkey, using her "Votes." The caption on the original drawing is: "Training the Animals.")
"Those who hold power are responsible not only for what they do but for what they do not do."
"Your party platforms have pledged women suffrage. Then why not be honest, frank friends of our cause, adopt it in reality as your own, make it a party program, and "fight with us"? As a party measure--a measure of all parties--why not put the amendment through Congress and the legislatures? We shall all be better friends, we shall have a happier nation, we women will be free to support loyally the party of our choice, and we shall be far prouder of our history." -Carrie Chapman Catt Speech before Congress 1917
Never underestimate the power of a story.
"I don't know how to type."
Here we see the Senator's wife, Emily, who found the courage to take a first step to support her beliefs by making a donation. Alice asks her to type, something Emily has never done before and she just sits down to teach herself. Imagine what it would feel like when you were finished.
As union women think about what we can teach ourselves. How can we teach others? Encourage others? Should we use today's technology? What has worked for you?
"Women like you are worse than anti-suffragist. You perpetuate the lie everyday at breakfast."
Your story + their story = our story.
Next up SUFFRAGIST or SUFFRAGETTE? and a looking through a generational lens.
RESOURCES:
Sewall Belmont Collection
http://www.sewallbelmont.org/collectionitems/suffragist-newspapers/
Woman's Suffrage Memorabilia http://womansuffragememorabilia.com/woman-suffrage-memorabilia/suffrage-journals/
THE MOVEMENT ACTION PLAN
http://www.thechangeagency.org/_dbase_upl/practical_strategist.pdf
History Is A Weapon
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/moyermap.html
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95833
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